Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1887-10-08

MERCHANTS Vi Slnall capltal, VINO are
in terrific struggle to keeptheirheads
above water. The Cunarders run
down the Newfoundland fishing
smacks. This is nothing against the
man who has the big store, for every
man has as large a store and as great
business as he a manage. To feel
right and do right under all this pres
sure requires martyr grace, requires
divine support, requires celestial re-
Enforcement. Yet there are tens of
thousands of such men getting splen-
didly through. They see others 60
ing down, but they keep their pa
thence. and their courage, and their
Christian consistency, and after a
while their turn of success will come.
"The owners of the big business
will die and their boys will get pos
session of the business, and with a
cigar in their mouth, and full to the
chin with the best liquor, and behind
a pair of spanking bays they will
pass everything on the turnpike
road to temporal and eternal perdi-
ton. Then the business will break
up, and the smaller dealers will have
fair opportunity.
Taking things as they are, you
will be wise to preserve your equili-
brium, and your honesty, and your
faith, and throw over all the coun-
tiers, and shelves, barrels, and hogs
heads, and cotton bales, and rice
casks, the measuring line Of divine
right. And the Lord said unto me:
Games what seest thou?'" And l
said: ga plumb line"
In the same way we need to
measure our t~heologies. All sorts of
religions are putting forth their pre-
tensions. Some have a spiritualistic
religion, and their chief work is with
ghosts, and others a religion of polit-
ical economy proposing to put an
end to human misery by a new style
Of taxation andthere is a humanita-
rian religion that looks after the
body of men and lets the soul look
after itself, and there is a legislative
religion that proposes to rectify all
wrongs by enactment of better laws,
and there is an aesthetic religion that
by rules of exquisite taste would lift
the heart out of its deformities, and
religions of all sorts, religions by the
ton-all of them devices of the devil
that would take the heart away from
the only religion that will ever effect
anything for the human race, and
that is the straight up-and-down re-
ligion written in the book, which be-
gins with Genesis and ends with
Revelation, the God-given religion,
the everlasting religion, which says
Love God above all and your neigh
Dor as yourself.1
81 want you to notice this fact,
that when a man gives up the
straight up-and-down religion in the
Bible for any new-fangled religion,
it is generally to suit his sins. You
first hear of his change of religion,
and then you hear of some swindle
he has practiced in Colorado mining
stock, telling some one if he will put
in $4,000 he can take out 800, 600
or, he has sacrificed his charity, OF
plunged into irremediable worldli-
ness. His sins are so broad he has to
broaden his religion, as broad as the
SOULS darkness, as broad as hell.
But, you say, you shut us
young folks out from all fun Oh,
no! like fun. l believe in fun.
have had lots Of it in my time. But
l have not had to go into paths of sir
to find it. No credit to me, but be-
cause of an extraordinary parenta,
example 1 was kept from outward
transgressions, though my heart was
bad enough and desperately wicked
1 have had fun illimitable, though ]
never swore one oath, and never
gambled for 10 much as a pin, anG
never saw the inside of a haunt of sir
save, as when ten years ago, with
commissioner Of police and a detec
tive and two elders of my church, ]
explored these cities by midnight
not out Of curiosity, but that 1 might
in the pulpit set before the people the
poverty and the horrors of under
ground city life. Yet, though 1 never
was intoxicated for an instant and
never committed one act of dissolute
ness, restrained only by the grace o.
God, without which restraint l would
have gone headlong to the bottom O.
infamy, / have had so much fun thai
/ don't believe there is a man on the